A Fort of Nine Towers (5 page)

Wakeel sulked, and did not talk to me for two days.

We had another cousin who was a few months younger than I. He never really got along with any of the others. Wakeel used to call him a jerk. All the other cousins, everyone, started to call him “Jerk” as well.

If he bought new clothes, he would walk in front of us to show them off and say something stupid. “We went to a shop in Shahr-e-Naw that opened a few weeks ago. They bring everything they sell from London and Paris. The owner told my parents that I have a good taste for clothes. I don’t think you guys can afford a suit like this.” When I asked how much he paid, he would triple the price.

Wakeel would ask, “Hey, Jerk, do your clothes do any magic for such a price?”

Jerk could never see a joke coming, and would ask something witless like, “What kind of magic?”

“Can they make you look less ugly?” Wakeel replied, his voice cracking into shrieking guffaws.

We’d all laugh, and Jerk would run toward his house and complain to his parents. We would run to the roof, or outside the courtyard, or hide in the garage inside my father’s car to escape punishment.

Once when Jerk had on his good clothes and was showing off, Wakeel filled his mouth with water, and I punched him in his stomach. That forced Wakeel to spit it all on Jerk. Poor Jerk looked at us in disbelief and asked with outrage in his voice why we had done that.

Wakeel told him, “We are practicing to be tough. We punch each other unexpectedly, so we will be prepared if we get into a fight with someone. You should be tough, too.” Then we punched him in his stomach, but avoided his face so we would not leave any bruises, because we knew that would get us spanked by his parents.

Jerk had one unexpected strength: he was always a reader. For his age, he had more information than he needed. He had a good mind for memorizing, too. That turned us even more against him.

Wakeel teased Jerk all the time when we were at home playing with our cousins. Outside, though, Wakeel would not let anybody bother him. Wakeel was like an older brother to all of us. When Jerk got into fights with the neighbor boys, which happened a lot, Wakeel defended
him. When we were playing football in the park, Wakeel always made sure that Jerk and I were on his team, so he could protect us.

Our neighbors were like us, quiet and educated people. When there was a wedding or engagement party in one of their houses, everyone in the neighborhood was invited, along with their kids and servants.

Every week my grandfather talked for ten minutes in the mosque after Friday prayers about how to keep our neighborhood clean, or how to solve water and electricity problems, or how to take care of the public park and create more facilities where the kids could play together. He had never been elected to any position, but people listened to him.

When a family was having financial problems, one of its older men would quietly speak to Grandfather and ask for the community’s help. Then, after Friday prayers, Grandfather would explain to the other men in the mosque that some money was needed without ever saying by whom. It was important to protect the dignity of the family in need.

One Friday after the others had left the mosque, I saw my grandfather giving the money he had collected to a neighbor whose wife had been sick for many months. The man kissed Grandfather’s hands, and said, “You always live up to our expectations. May God grant you long life, health, and strength.” When Grandfather noticed that I was watching him, he scowled at me, and I quickly turned away. This was something I was not meant to see.

Grandfather’s house was his great pride, and the McIntosh apple trees were his great joy. He was in his late sixties when I was born, and soon after became a widower. By then he had retired from the bank, and busied himself in the courtyard, planting roses, geraniums, and hollyhocks or watering his McIntosh apple trees, always singing in a whispery voice under his teeth, or quietly reciting the ninety-nine names of God.

And for hours he would sit reading, surrounded by his books. His favorite, in two beautiful leather-bound volumes, was
Afghanistan in
the Path of History
by Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar. The title was embossed on the cover in gold. Sometimes he read to me from it.

He also had the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
, which had beautiful covers as well; but he did not read those to me. When I asked about them, he said he would give them to me when I was old enough.

In winter, he studied the poets Rumi, Shams Tabrizi, Hafiz, Sa’adi, and Omar-e-Khayyam. Sometimes he invited his friends to discuss the political affairs of Afghanistan and the world. But before long, the talk would turn to poetry. He always wanted me and my boy cousins to listen to what was being said, and to ask questions.

My sisters and girl cousins were never part of those discussions. Their lives moved on a different path from those of the boys, but they were always allowed to read Grandfather’s books. Indeed, Grandfather always encouraged them to do so. “Education,” he would say, stressing the word, “is the key to the future.” They read lots of poetry, as well as novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and some Afghan and Iranian novelists whose names no one knows in the rest of the world. All these books were in Dari.

Some of the older girls, including Wakeel’s sisters, read Grandfather’s books by Sigmund Freud long before I did. We could hear them whispering about something called “the Oedipus complex,” and then laughing. As soon as any of the younger cousins got too close to them, though, they stopped talking and looked at us in a way to make us understand that we were not welcome.

One day during one of Grandfather’s discussions, Wakeel raised his hand and asked what politics was all about.

One of Grandfather’s friends answered, “In fact, politics is really just a bunch of lies, and politicians are very gifted liars who use their skill to control power and money and land.”

“They must be devious people, then,” Wakeel said.

“That’s true.”

“Which country has the most devious politicians?” Wakeel asked.

“Let me tell you a story, my son,” Grandfather’s friend said, clearing his throat. “Someone asked Shaitan, the devil, ‘Since there is such
a large number of countries in the world, how do you manage to keep so many of them in turmoil all the time, like Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Palestine? You must be very busy.’ ”

“Shaitan laughed and said, ‘That is no problem. Not for me.’ He leaned back on his cushion and raised the mouthpiece of his
chillum
to his scaly lips. He drew in a sour-smelling smoke that made the water in the pipe turn black with oily bubbles, then let the smoke drain out of the corners of his mouth. ‘There is one country on the earth that does a better job than me in creating problems everywhere.’ ”

“Really?” Wakeel asked. “Which country is more devious than Shaitan?”

“ ‘It is called England,’ Shaitan said.”

My grandfather and his friends all laughed, and then they talked about poetry again.

It would be years before I understood the bad feelings that many Afghans have for England, which three times invaded Afghanistan and three times was driven out. For nearly three centuries, the English used Afghanistan like a playing field to challenge the Russians in a very ugly game. Neither side won, and neither side cared how many Afghans they killed or how much suffering they inflicted on Afghan people.

Those days were long in the past, like the battles between the ancient kings who had fought to rule our country. Life was smooth, and easy, and full of joy, except maybe for Jerk when we played tricks on him. Time moved graciously with the pace of the seasons, and nudged us gently through the stages of life. But then one night the air was filled with the unexpected cries of
“Allah-hu-Akbar
,” and nothing has ever been the same since.

Allah-hu-Akbar

C
hill winds from the high mountains around Kabul had begun to blow down on the city. Autumn was coming. It had been especially cold the past two nights. Now my parents and my aunts and uncles were using this Friday afternoon to set up the wood-burning tin stoves called
bokhari
in every room. When flakes of last winter’s soot fell out of the pipes, some of the uncles said bad words. The cousins laughed and raced to tell one another what they had heard.

Just as night fell, the electricity suddenly went out. I looked outside. It was not just our house. The whole city was completely dark. I had never seen that before. Kabul always had electricity.

My mother said, “Oh, it’s as dark as a grave.”

I thought for a moment. How did my mother know how dark a grave is?

“Have you ever been in a grave?” I asked her.

“Stop being silly,” she chided as she went to find candles.

My older sister had been doing her homework. “There is no electricity in a grave, idiot,” she said. “Of course it is dark.” She went to help my mother.

I looked out the window again into the darkness. No one was in the street. Could a grave be as big as a whole city?

I could hear voices in the distance. It was like the murmurings of a thousand people from the far side of Kabul. At first, I thought that it must be
muezzins
calling people to prayer. But the prayer time had been twenty minutes ago, and the voices were not familiar like the
muezzins
’. Nor were they coming over a loudspeaker, nor from the direction of the nearby mosques. The voices kept getting louder. Now I could hear them shouting “
Allah-hu-Akbar, Allah-hu-Akbar
.” God is great.

I ran to find my mother to ask her why they were saying that. She was searching through all the drawers for candles; my older sister was looking for matches.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You’re even more than four times older than I am,” I told her insistently, “but still you don’t know more than me.” She finally located a candle and lit it. She held it in her right hand and cupped her left palm around it. The soft light made her look very beautiful.

She kissed me on my cheek, which made me smile, and said, “Go and ask your father. Then you will know more than I know.” The wax dripped on her thin, delicate fingers. She flinched and put the candle on the table. The wind blew in through the windows, making the curtains dance and the candle flutter; the voices outside grew louder.

I found my father in the courtyard, up on a ledge of the thick mud-brick wall that separated us from the street. He was leaning over, hoping someone would pass who could tell him what was going on.

The sound grew, like a wind rising. Now we could hear people in many places yelling. They were not organized. Everybody seemed to be saying their own “
Allah-hu-Akbar
,” some louder and some softer.

Suddenly, the man across the street who owned the shop at the corner started calling “
Allah-hu-Akbar
” inside his courtyard. Then I heard his two brothers join him. A couple of more courtyards down the street began having their own voices.

My father jumped down from the ledge. He landed on one of the low wooden platforms where we sometimes spread carpets and ate dinner. He, too, started shouting, “
Allah-hu-Akbar!
”

I was very surprised. I wanted to shout, too. But I did not hear
any kids’ voices. It was all men, and I was a little bit frightened. I hugged my father’s leg.

I put my head against his leg and heard a different voice coming from inside it. Then I pulled my head away and heard his usual voice. I did this several times, then called my older sister and told her to do the same. She grabbed his other leg and put her ear to it. We were fascinated by our new discovery. My father paid no attention to us. He was shouting louder now, and that made it more exciting for us. We were putting our ears to his legs and pulling away, giggling.

I heard some more familiar voices joining in, and even some women. I pulled my head away from my father’s leg. All my uncles and my aunts were standing behind my father and shouting, “
Allah-hu-Akbar.”

“Why are they all saying that?” I asked no one in particular.